Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775–1995

Maurice O. Wallace

Published by Duke University Press 2002

Constructing the Black Masculine

Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775–1995

Maurice O. Wallace

In the series A John Hope Franklin Center Book

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822383796

Overview
Contents

About this book

A major rethinking of the issues around African American masculinity, tracing its relation to images of construction, and applying ideas from Eve Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet.

Author / Editor information

Maurice O. Wallace is Assistant Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Duke University.

Reviews

“A most impressive interrogation into the problematic of black masculine identity as it has manifested in the U.S. context from the late eighteenth century through the present day. Readers from across a range of disciplines will be uniformly impressed by the scope and dexterity of Wallace’s critical intelligence. This is an overwhelmingly admirable achievement and a very important book.”—Phillip Brian Harper, author of Are We Not Men? Masculine Anxiety and the Problem of African-American Identity

“Highly original and deeply probing in its analyses into the intricacies of its topic, Constructing the Black Masculine is a timely and rewarding addition to the study of African American literature, American studies, and race and sexuality. Maurice O. Wallace has a lot to teach.”—Nellie McKay, coeditor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustration Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One. Spectragraphia
1. On Dangers Seen and Unseen: Identity Politics and the Burden of Black Male Specularity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
Part Two. No hiding place
2. ‘‘Are We Men?’’: Prince Hall, Martin Delany, and the Black Masculine Ideal in Black Freemasonry, 1775–1865 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
3. Constructing the Black Masculine: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and the Sublimits of African American Autobiography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
4. A Man’s Place: Architecture, Identity, and Black Masculine Being Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	108
Part Three. Looking B(l)ack
5. ‘‘I’m Not Entirely What I Look Like’’: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and the Hegemony of Vision; or, Jimmy’s FBEye Blues Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
6. What Juba Knew: Dance and Desire in Melvin Dixon’s Vanishing Rooms Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Afterword: ‘‘What Ails You Polyphemus?’’: Toward a New Ontology of Vision in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 256
Illustrations
- Other: 17 b&w photos

eBook

Published: June 12, 2002
ISBN: 9780822383796